Qatar Charity opens $200K Java madrassa

Indonesia's newest Wahhabi madrassa

Qatar Charity, an entity that Osama Bin Laden once regarded as one of Al Qaeda’s three most important charitable front groups, has committed 760,000 Qatari rials (about 200,000 USD) to build a madrassa in West Java, Indonesia.  The charity, which is blacklisted by Israel, does not even pay lip service to the idea of having “moderate” imams or curriculum at the school.  From the charity’s press release last month:

Qatar Charity has established an educational project in Indonesia, after a QAR 760,000 donation.

The project includes a school, mosque, library, clinic, Quran memorization center, student housing and a student service center and was funded by a donation from Aisha Hussain Behzad.

The opening ceremony was attended by Dr. Nur Shams, Director of Educational Affairs at the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, Dr. Al-Haj Saad Eddin, Governor of Bakassi city, Ibrahim Mohammed Al Mahmoudi, acting Qatari Ambassador, Ibrahim Zainal, Director of Monitoring at QC and Hassan Ozkor, QC Office Director in Indonesia.

Zainal stressed QC’s enthusiasm for the implementation of such projects, which work in cooperation with local authorities, local associations and the targeted communities and beneficiaries in order to support the most vulnerable.

The project resembles so many Gulf-sponsored initiatives over the past 40 years that use Arab oil wealth to export fiery Wahhabi teachings to parts of the Islamic world that historically had somewhat less dangerous expressions of Islam tempered by local traditions and culture.

Qatar Charity (sometimes called Qatar Charitable Society) was formerly known as the Qatar Charitable Foundation.  The Qatar Charitable Foundation was implicated as an Al Qaeda front, a Hamas-supporting Union of Good member that also funded Chechen Islamists, a central player in a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995, and a financier of the Bangladeshi jihadist organization Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Like many nefarious Islamic charities, Qatar Charity probably renamed itself after its connections to terrorism was revealed.  This is done to confuse and mislead Western government agencies, financial institutions, media outlets, and English speakers.  The same technique was used by the Islamic African Relief Agency which renamed itself the Islamic American Relief Agency, by the Iranian-backed Alavi Foundation, by renamed Iranian vessels to avoid sanctions, and by the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services, a Canadian Union of Good member, which changed its name to IRFAN after being outed.  National Review Online found that Mercy-USA had changed its name after the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings after news accounts implicated Mercy in the attacks.

Qatar Charity/Qatar Charitable Foundation should not be confused with the “Qatar Foundation,” a separate entity that came under fire during club sponsorship talks with Barcelona.  The Qatar Foundation has opened a center in the name of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (who is an anti-semite, an intellectual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a proponent of jihad with money, and founder of the Union of Good network of charities that is sanctioned by the U.S. and Israel for supporting Hamas), and is therefore a dangerous foundation in its own right, but is distinct from Qatar Charity.

As recently as last July, U.S. Treasury officials have criticized Qatar’s role in facilitating the flow of money to Al Qaeda.  Qatar has also funded armed rebels in Syria who seek to replace the Assad regime with a Muslim Brotherhood jihadist coalition.